


A Thousand Apologies.

by VictoryCandescence



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drawing from ACD Canon, F/M, Gen, John's POV, Post-Reichenbach, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoryCandescence/pseuds/VictoryCandescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life goes on beyond the Fall, and John Watson begins again the only way he knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Apologies.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is meant to be a companion piece with [You of All Men.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364888)

 

 

 

John Watson woke abrupt and early one cold, still January morning in his tiny room, in a beige-coloured bedsit outside London. When he tried to stand from his bed, he found that his leg gave out beneath him. He knelt on the floor and swore under his breath, mashing his fist into the rug in frustration. 

It was then he realised there was nothing left for it. Something about this life would have to change, or he’d not want to make the effort any longer.

Rather than concede the defeat of using the cane again, he limped his way to the desk, thankful for the first time that his room was so small. He opened his laptop, pulled up his CV and a job board for the hospitals nearest his block of flats.

By Wednesday he had an interview for a position, and by Monday next he was getting acquainted with the other doctors and nurses in Newham University’s A&E. 

It was strange and perhaps a bit unhealthy how much enjoyment John seemed to get out of his new job. He was sure it wasn’t as fast-paced as the A&Es closer to the city centre, but there was a relatively steady flow of people in at all hours, with all sorts of ailments, all needing immediate and urgent attention. A week of severe asthma attacks and the aftermath of a drunken brawl saw his limp vanish. After his first real bout with a patient going into cardiac arrest, his leg didn’t hurt at all, and his hand was steady as steel. 

It wasn’t danger, at least not for him. But he was vicariously experiencing the precarious balance upon the edge of life-or-death through the patients he treated. Adrenaline was adrenaline, and his brain didn’t care how it came about. Chasing criminals through back alleys, being kidnapped, racing the clock to find solutions – summarily not the same as restarting someone’s heart, successfully stanching the flow of blood from a stab wound, or hearing the blessed intake of breath from a child who’d stopped breathing. But they had a much sweeter reward, even if the consequence was the same. And John felt like he had a purpose again; there was some meaning imbued into his existence for the first time in over a year.

After two months, John bought himself new clothes; he hadn’t done so since he’d lived at Baker Street. Mrs Hudson noticed when he met her for his Sunday visit, said the jumper he was wearing made his eyes look bluer than they had been in a long time. John knew that the clothes weren’t the only reason, but he couldn’t explain it, even to himself.  

John worked overtime, took extra shifts, saw to as many patients as he could, from allergic reactions to wheat on Saturday evenings to foaming-at-the-mouth overdoses at four in the morning in the middle of the week. He even tried to check in with his patients after they’d stabilised, just to say hello, see how they were holding up.

One afternoon a woman came in alone, walking zombie-like through the doors. She was complaining of an intense migraine and persistent nausea. The poor woman could hardly open her eyes in the examination room, kept losing her breath and her voice was raspy and dry to the point where she almost couldn’t speak. 

“It’s bronchitis,” said Dr Fischer dismissively. “She says she’s had the symptoms before, and that they’ve gone away within a day or so. She just moved here, probably having a hard time adjusting.”

“Yes, but bronchitis just doesn’t come and go like that,” said John skeptically. Fischer waved his hand at him.

“We’ve got too much to do here to be worrying about this. She should’ve gone to the surgery instead of wasting the time of the A&E staff. Let her sit it off and send her out.”

“Bollocks,” said John under his breath. “Bronchitis my arse.” He took the chart and pushed past Fischer, who followed sputtering protests.  

He strode over and opened the curtain. “Ms Morstan? Dr Watson. Mind if I give you my second opinion?”

“By all means,” she said, and John thought she might smile if she didn’t look like she couldn’t even muster the energy to stay sitting upright.

John’s eyes flicked over her hunched form: She was achy, nauseous, having a hard time breathing. But there was also a tinge of yellow to her eyes and skin, she’d been sick twice since she’d been admitted, and her blood pressure was alarmingly low.

“Tell me, Ms Morstan, have you been around anyone welding metal?”

“Why – um, yes actually, I have been. They’re refitting the zinc ceiling and the piping of the library I manage.”

John turned and gave Fischer a look that was stern and smug at the same time.

“What kind of question is that, Watson?”

“The kind that you should’ve been asking. She’s got metal fume fever,” he said. He turned back to Ms Morstan. “Your colleagues should be arriving shortly, if they haven’t come already, and we need to get someone to tell those welders to seal off the area and take the proper precautions before we have the whole town’s library patronage turning yellow and going into convulsions.”

Fischer was still gobsmacked. “How on earth are you sure that it’s – what is it, metal fume fever? That seems so arbitrary.”

“I’m sure because I’ve –” John paused for for the barest of seconds as a place in his memory he’d stuffed away was suddenly knocked free. “I’ve seen it before.”

“I thought you were a soldier, not a smelter,” said Fischer derisively.

“There was a case we...I encountered when I was in London. A case where someone was deliberately causing fume poisoning in a malicious capacity. Someone – taught me how to observe for the symptoms.” Ms Morstan’s eyes went wide, but Fischer just grumbled and handed over the chart.

“Take care of it, then. I’ll give the library a ring.”

John turned back to the worried looking woman before him.

“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, laying a hand on her arm. “It’s damn uncomfortable, but it’s not serious. Metalworkers used to call it 'Monday Fever' because it clears right up over a weekend’s time. You’ll be right as rain by Friday night. All you need to do is rest; I’ll monitor your blood pressure and get you some paracetamol for your head.” 

She nodded, but reached up her hand and caught John’s wrist. He looked down at her delicate fingers, then at her face. He noticed for the first time that she was really  quite pretty, even looking all tired and yellow. He cleared his throat. It had been ages since he’d been nervous in front of a woman’s attentions.

Then again, it had been ages since he’d been the object of a woman’s attentions at all.

“Thank you, Dr Watson,” she said with the little voice she had left. “I...I’m sort of alone here – my family’s not much use, and I don’t have any friends in the area. Everyone thought I’d been being a hypochondriac. So – I just wanted to thank you for being so kind.”

“No need to,” he said, and then before he could stop himself, “You can call me John.”

“Mary,” she said, and that time she did muster a smile.

After which she promptly vomited onto John’s scrubs.

“Oh my god,” she rasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. The yellow in her face was mottled by vivid pink.

“It’s all right, it’s fine,” John said, hardly phased as he grabbed paper towel from the closest dispenser. “It’s an occupational hazard. You’re not the first person to throw up on me, though you are by far the prettiest.” The blush in her cheeks bloomed. 

“There’s one way to raise my blood pressure,” she said. John actually laughed, and so did Mary. He looked at her and realised it wasn’t a lie – she really was lovely, even after that spectacular display of reverse peristalsis. How could that possibly be? He went and changed, then got her medicine and a pitcher of water; she gave him another smile, and they exchanged mobile numbers.

That Sunday, he cancelled with Mrs Hudson, promising he’d see her later in the week. He swore he could hear a knowing smile in her “That’s quite all right, dear,” though there was conceivably no way for her to know that he was currently sprawled naked beneath a soft lilac-colored duvet with a newly-healthy, very pretty librarian wrapped around him, her delicate fingers resting carefully over the scar on his shoulder, beneath his own steady hand.

With her eyes still closed, she pressed her lips to the curve of his neck. 

“Do you always wind up fancying your patients, doctor?” Mary purred teasingly when he hung up and dropped his mobile off the side of the bed.

“Occupational hazard,” he answered. He could feel her smile against his skin.

Until that point John was simply living. Existing. Surviving.

But at that moment, he felt alive.

 

\---

 

On the nights when he lost a patient, which were thankfully few, he would walk home instead of taking the tube. He would breathe in the cool night air, slow and deliberate. He would look up at the dark sky, find the tiny pinprick of a star and whisper an apology. It was something he used to do in Afghanistan, to steady himself, to allay his guilt. His despair that he’d done all he could but failed. His shame that his hand did not shake, that his leg did not give him pain. 

_They should_ , he thought sometimes,  _I should ache in sympathy_. 

But he didn’t. 

John Watson was a good man, and a good doctor, but he was no hero. Heroes didn’t exist. Someone important to him told him that a long time ago. They’d also said that caring never saved anyone, but that was something John could never accept. He was a doctor first and foremost because he cared whether the people who came to him lived or died. He cared about their families, cared that the lives they lived were as long and free of suffering as possible. He cared, whether the person beneath his hands was a child who’d accidentally ingested poison, or a drunk who’d accidentally walked into traffic. Every life he saved was penance for a life he lost – or took, so very long ago.

So he remembered, always carried it in his mind: all those lives, even the ones he hadn’t encountered yet, all tiny pinpricks of light inside his own strange darkness. And one life in particular –  his life, the one he couldn’t save, that was over before he even understood it was in danger. His life was the thin band of light on the horizon, though John never knew if it was the sun rising or setting.

But his hands were still, and his leg was strong and solid beneath him as he walked through the night.

 

\---

  
One Thursday, about a year into his time at the Newham A&E, the night shift was a bit slow. A man came in begging pills for his sciatica; a woman came in having labour pains a half-month early. Nothing serious. John was drinking tea in triage with two nurses, a young bloke named Gary and a brassy mum named Lorraine. They were talking about some telly programme, and John was texting back and forth with Mary before she went to bed, smiling fondly at the little words of love she’d make pop onto the tiny screen of his mobile. He had just sent her  _Goodnight x_ when they heard the ambulance alert. 

John’s ears pricked back, his muscles tensed, and he readied himself.

Moments later the gurney burst through the doors.

“Male, late thirties, blunt-force trauma to the head and body, severe knife wounds and lacerations to the forearms, legs and back, three broken ribs, possible dislocated jaw, deep puncture in left flank,” called the paramedic over the clatter of the wheels and swing of doors. 

John looked down at the man laid out below him. He was quite tall – his feet were almost hanging off the end of the stretcher – and dangerously thin. His jeans were worn through the knees and frayed at the hems, dark with blood where they were slashed through with what must have been a hunting knife, or something similar. His shirt and jumper had been ripped open by the first responders; John could see that aside from the fresh wounds and contusions, the man’s torso was peppered with myriad other scars, some old, some rather recent. They stood out angry red and jagged against his pale skin. His hands were caked with blood – whether it was his own or someone else’s, John couldn’t tell, as the wounds there were consistent with self-defence. He was shoeless, one threadbare sock still clinging to one long foot. John’s eyes settled on his face last, and that was the worst part. A shock of short white-blond hair shot through with the bright red stain of fresh blood peeked above hastily applied bandages. Both his eyes were swollen shut and badly bruised. Blood was still flowing freely from his nose. His mouth was covered with an oxygen mask, and his neck was cradled in a brace.

_Poor bastard_ , thought John.  _Someone’s dragged him through hell_.

“What was the situation?” he heard himself ask.

“Fight to the death, looks like,” said a young paramedic. “Knives mostly, and a lead pipe. When we got there, this bloke was barely breathing – if we’d got the call a minute later he’d a been a goner.”

“We have a name?” asked another doctor as John went to work suturing the worst of the knife wounds. He couldn’t help but keep looking up at the man’s face, bloodied and beaten as it may have been. 

“Had an ID, but they think it’s a fake. Said ‘Franklin Crick’ on it, address in Wales somewhere...”

John didn’t hear most of the rest of what the paramedic was saying, because the man whose name wasn’t Franklin Crick chose that moment to go into shock. The adrenaline coursed through John’s veins, and he let his brain go into doctoring autopilot, performing each task smoothly and without panic. His fellow attending doctors and nurses took his cue and stayed calm, and within minutes the man was stabilised and his bleeding was under control.

It took three hours of patching and cleaning and two bags of new blood through the man’s veins, but by the time John finished with him, he was no longer on the ledge overlooking death. John stayed with him as they wheeled the man into a recovery room, and hung back to adjust his IV lines, record his vitals. 

“Who are you, Mr Crick?” he said under his breath as he taped down the needle running into his forearm. The man was still under heavy sedation, but John felt his long fingers curl up, brushing his own wrist softly, right at his pulse point. He looked back at the man’s face one last time, still mostly obscured by bruises, bandages and the oxygen mask. 

Even though Not Franklin Crick was saved, John walked home that night. He breathed slowly, he let his eyes wander to the stars. He stood for a long while on the pavement outside his flat, hands jammed in the pockets of his coat, looking up into the vast expanse of darkness, heavy black save for those tiny points of light. He was quiet closing the door of his and Mary’s flat. He undressed and showered, and crawled into bed next to her sleep-warm body. She snuffled and rolled over to drape an arm and leg over him, to press her lips into his shoulder. He fell asleep with a smile on his face.

But he woke up shouting, having dreamt himself falling from a great height. 

Mary was gone to work already, and he was alone. By the time he had shuffled into the kitchen to make himself coffee, he’d forgotten the dream. Only the uncomfortable feeling it gave him lingered, tugging at his thoughts like a sliver in his skin.

When he went in later that day, the man was still comatose, wrapped up in bandages and compresses. John sat by his bed during his break, wondering where he’d come from, and who would be malicious enough to beat him to within an inch of his life. Had he done something horrible himself? John was hard-pressed to find a reason good enough to bloody up a man this badly. 

John talked to the unconscious man, to keep him company through the loneliness of his sedation. Nonsense things, really. He told him about himself; recalled a story about a Christmas he’d spent in Kandahar. He loved the memory, but never quite felt it appropriate to relate to anyone, as everyone in the story (save only for himself and one other officer) were no longer alive.

When John came in to check on him the next night after his shift ended, he told him about Mary. He told him all the things he loved about her he never said aloud to anyone but her, and only then in the quiet soft light of their bedroom. 

The night after that, he even found himself talking to Not-Crick about  _him_. John told Not-Crick about his time with him at Baker Street, how brilliant he was and how badly he still missed him. It occurred to John that he hadn’t spoken of him that way in such a long time, not even to Ella, not even to Mary.

“How’s your mystery patient?” Mary asked that night at dinner.

“Stable, but they’re keeping him under heavy sedation. I’ve, er, been talking to him.”

Mary smiled. “What do you talk to him about?”

John sighed, pushed a potato wedge around his plate with his fork. “Oh, you know. Just things. Told him a story about when I was in the service. Told him about you.”

“About me?” she laughed. “What about me?”

“I told him about how loud you snore and how terrible your cooking is, and how you have these great hairy warts on your bum.”

Mary tossed her head back in laughter, threw her wadded-up napkin at John’s head from across the table, which he smacked away expertly as he flashed her a mischievous look.

“What else?” asked Mary. John looked down at the table, remembering, and felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I told him about the time we wound up in Soho dressed as ninjas doing battle with a teenager in a spandex unitard.” Mary’s giggling bubbled up again, and the sound of it made John feel warm inside instead of hollow and sad as he usually felt when he thought back to that time in his life. She didn’t ask who he meant when he said “we”; she didn’t have to. That was one of the reasons he loved her so much.

“Tell me,” she said, her eyes bright. So John told her the story, carried by the sweet sound of her laughter.

That night, John dreamt of falling again – but it ended differently. He woke not with a desperate start, but feeling disoriented, confused. As if he was missing something, some vital piece of information.

He had the next two days off. So he made himself busy to get the inscrutable feeling out of his system. He did some grocery shopping, ran a few errands. That night, Mary and he cooked dinner together and fell asleep on the couch watching a movie. He didn’t dream again, and he woke with Mary in his arms, her honey-colored hair splayed out across his chest. They made love lazily in the late morning light that filtered through the bedroom window shades, and he decided to accompany her to the shops after they got dressed. By the time they’d returned to the flat, he’d forgotten all about the strange feeling the dream had given him. 

Until his mobile rang. It was the A&E.

“Hey there, Lorraine,” he said. “Anything the matter?” Mary quirked an eyebrow, and he shrugged in response. It was rare that they’d need to call him in early, and when they did, it wasn’t good news. His shift didn’t start for another six hours, and he’d hoped to get some sleep before he went in.

“Nothing pertinent, Dr Watson, but that patient you’ve been checking in on, the bloke with the fake name? Well, he’s come around, and Gary says he’s been shouting for you every time he wakes.”

“Shouting for me? In particular?”

“Trying to shout, anyway. His voice is still pretty rough. I don’t think it warrants you coming in early, but I just thought I’d give you fair warning. We’ve been trying to sedate him again, but he keeps ripping the IV out saying he was promised no more needles.”

The sliver slid its way back into John’s skin again. Something strange was happening.

“Did you get a name off him? Family contact? Anything?”

“Nothing. He’s only been saying your name and the bit about the needles. The swelling in his face has gone down considerably, though, so we could get a DI in here for a statement or something, maybe file a missing persons.”

John wound up going in a bit early anyway. If Not Franklin Crick could speak now, surely he could tell them something, _anything_ about the attack, his attacker, his real name. He could tell them what the bloody hell was going on here, especially because John couldn’t remember ever telling the man his name, and was pretty sure no one else had either, since he was officially being taken care of by a different doctor completely.

He’d intended to go to him, but when John got in his attention got snatched away by a particularly nasty compound fracture of the tibia of a middle-aged man doing ill-advised roofing work on his house. Between that and the next emergency (a burst appendix), Lorraine told him they’d managed to sedate Not-Crick again to the point where he wasn’t trying to rip his IV needles out or actively roll himself out of the bed – yes, he was doing that too. John’s theory that he was a very unlucky junkie went unrevised inside his head.

John threw himself into expediting the backlog of non-urgent patients, trying his best not to over-think it. Still, that strange feeling was biting at the edges of John’s mind. He tried to put a name to it, but couldn’t. It was a feeling he used to get much more often years ago – the feeling of knowing there’s something missing in the thread of his thought, but not knowing exactly what, and the familiar frustration it caused. He felt like he had an answer, but wasn’t quite sure what the question was.

When his shift had finally run its course, John entered the man’s room quietly, as he had before. He closed the door softly behind him, and drew close to the curtain. He wasn’t sure if the man was still comatose, or sedated, or merely sleeping, but didn’t want to take the chance of riling him again and earning the floor nurses’ ire.

“Needles,” a voice said, raspy and deep, behind the curtain. “I promised him. No more, never again.”

John held his breath.

He heard the rattle of the fluid bag on the pole, knew without looking the man was tangling the tubes in his fingers and ripping them from his skin again. He drew back the curtain to warn him against the damage, to still him–

And what met John’s eyes was a face he recognised. 

Yes, he was badly bruised and bandaged – and _blond_. But there were his bright, sharp green-grey eyes. There were his angular cheekbones, his bowed lips, though they were respectively scraped and split. There was the proud posture, even sitting up in the bed: the coquettishly squared shoulders of a man who once demanded his word be taken as Gospel without a hint of facetiousness or irony. The only thing upon his face that was remarkably unfamiliar was the look of shock he was directing at John, who was sure it was a mirror of his own.

Suddenly the floor seemed to rock beneath him, his head felt weightless, a greyish mist clouded his vision – and John Watson fainted for the first and likely last time in his life.  

 

\---

  
_ Oh god. I’ve finally gone round the bend. _

“John!”

The sound of his name was murky inside his ears. He groaned.

Slowly, John opened his eyes. There was something cold and hard beneath him, which he deduced must be the floor, because above him was beige insulated ceiling tile and fluorescent tube lighting. Suddenly a purplish-yellow blotch loomed in at the edge of his sight, and John watched it resolve itself into a face – a familiar face set in unfamiliar expressions: fear, and joy, and fondness.

“Sher–Sherlock?” John whispered. 

No, that couldn’t be right. This person wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. Sherlock was – 

“Yes, John. It’s me – god, it’s me.” 

“Where have you been?” John asked stupidly, the words falling thickly off his tongue.

Sherlock’s mouth quirked at the very corner.

“Lost,” he said simply. 

He hooked his skinny arms, wires and all, underneath John’s arms and hoisted him up until he was half-sitting, half-leaning against the bed. Sherlock plonked down beside, his hospital gown twisted askew around his thin frame, thoroughly exhausted and wincing from that exertion. Somewhere in the back of John’s mind, his doctor autopilot was screaming at him for ignoring the blatant disregard this man was displaying for his bodily health, but –

“Sherlock!” John’s heart restarted itself by going into full-tilt overdrive. “Jesus fuck! _How_ are you – you’re _alive_! But I saw you – I _watched_ when you – and now you’ve gone and got yourself turned inside-out! What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” 

John clutched at the chest of his scrubs, as if to squeeze his heart into submission. He closed his eyes and inclined his head, taking a deep breath. When he looked up again, his expression was grave, and the hardness in his eyes caused Sherlock to shift uncomfortably beneath his gaze.

“You were dead,” he said, his voice pitched low as he willed it not to break. “I saw your blood –  _I stood at your grave_ , Sherlock. We were harassed on the street by reporters – I...I couldn’t even bear to go back to Baker Street. You broke Mrs Hudson’s heart. Greg was suspended for everything that happened, and Molly wouldn’t even look at me – I haven’t spoken to her in almost two years. And _you_ – You arrogant, deceitful _prick_! Alive! Where – and how–? What even–?” 

John’s hands were gesticulating pointlessly now somewhere above his head. He clenched his fists down at his sides and set his jaw hard, fearing that if he didn’t calm down, he’d hit him. He’d hit his patient. 

His best friend. 

Who was already bruised and still bleeding from a fight that nearly cost him his life. A life he thought was already spent.

“John, those aren’t even fully formed questions,” said Sherlock calmly, as if he had just not been sharply berated by John.

“Well, let me recover from my goddamned heart attack first and I’ll finish! Any sodding suggestions?” He should be more angry. He really should. But it was slipping away fast, his hold on it loosening the longer he looked at him.

“You didn’t say anything about my alias yet,” said Sherlock.

The man was as infuriating as ever. “What _should_ I say!?”

“It wasn’t my cleverest  _nom de guerre_. I thought for sure you’d notice, but...well, the surname goes with yours.” 

John looked at him blankly for a moment before he said the two names together inside his head and realised what he meant. Sherlock’s mouth twisted, and John’s serious expression melted away, and for the first time in what felt like forever (and indeed, almost was), he had the plain delight of seeing and hearing Sherlock Holmes laugh, deep and true, the quiet harmony to his giggling melody.

“Watson and Crick. _Franklin_ Crick – you complete prat,” John breathed out. “You utter arse.”

“I just wanted to feel connected to you again, somehow,” said Sherlock, and even through the purple-green bruises, John saw the painful, rare honesty in Sherlock’s eyes. “I was afraid I’d never be able to come back to you, or that you’d have worked to forget me. But as you demonstrated by your monologues at my bedside, I needn’t have feared such a thing.”

John reeled again, feeling a blush rise up hot on his neck.

“I – oh my god. I’ve been talking to you the entire week without knowing it. How could I be so...of _course_ it was you, only you would make a bloody science joke to yourself. I just don’t–” and suddenly John’s throat was so tight, he couldn’t continue to speak. He dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose hard, willing the tears to abate. But they wouldn’t. So he let them come, failing to find a reason to hold back anymore. He let in heavy gasps, his shoulders shaking with the effort to keep his breath steady.

“John,” said Sherlock. He sounded fairly alarmed, but simply hearing his name intoned in that voice, that voice John was finally convinced he’d never hear again made a fresh wave of tears well over his palms. 

He felt a hand grip his wrist and pull. Not daring to uncover his face, he let himself be led by the gentle tug. He was nearer Sherlock now, close enough to feel his breath, to feel the warm presence of his body. Sherlock’s other hand circled his wrist, and he pulled John’s hands away from his eyes. He chanced a blurry look; Sherlock was looking up at him, studying his face, watching intently the path of a teardrop as it rolled out of John’s eye, down his face and dripped off his cheek, landing with a barely audible _pip_ on the fabric of the gown stretched over Sherlock’s legs. He reached his hands up and put them on John’s shoulders, bringing his forehead down to press against his own. John closed his eyes and gripped Sherlock’s arms, felt his sinewy muscle through the thin cotton. It was then he noticed Sherlock was trembling, his breath coming in quiet, hitched sobs. He didn’t want to let go of the man, for fear that he may unravel right in front of him, that he might dematerialise beneath his fingers. He wanted to say something to calm him, but it was Sherlock who spoke first.

“I owe you a thousand apologies John. I had no idea this would be so hard on you – or that I myself would react so strongly. Please forgive me, John. You must understand why I did what I have done.”

Just then, all the shards of thoughts, the answers without questions resolved, revealed themselves to John in a burst of comprehension.  _This must be what it feels like_ , he thought.

“It’s all right,” John felt himself speaking the words more than he heard them. “I understand. I forgive you.”

After a long moment, Sherlock’s trembling subsided. John realised the fingers of his left hand had wound up threaded into the choppy blond hair at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, his thumb stroking soothingly. He drew his head away just a bit so that he could look Sherlock in the eye. Sherlock looked back up at him; he had not cried, but his eyes were glassed over with tears. 

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want a full explanation, every word, in painstakingly boring detail – and while you’re at it, you should thank your lucky stars you’re laid up, because if there was an inch left on your face that wasn’t bruised already, you best believe I’d have chinned you stupid.”

“Nonsense. It’s statistically improbable for a man of your build and stature to deliver a punch that could alter brain function in any profound way,” said Sherlock.

_And just like that_ , thought John,  _he’s back_.

John eased him back into the bed, reinserted the needles and reattached the heart monitor, gently admonishing him for pulling at his stitches and upsetting the bind on his ribs. It was a testament to just how injured he was, or how much he trusted John, that he didn’t protest. He settled Sherlock and turned toward the door, fishing for his phone.

“Don’t leave,” Sherlock said, jerking forward.

“I’m not, I just have to call –”

“Mary. Yes,” Sherlock finished for him, sinking back into the pillows. John stopped with his hand on the door handle. He turned back around and faced Sherlock, who hadn’t taken his eyes off John yet.

“You remembered her name.”

“Well it’s hardly a difficult one to forget, being so commonplace, and I may have been bashed about the head but my neural responses have hardly been compromised long term.”

“But you never remember any of my girlfriend’s names.”

Sherlock gave John what he supposed was his  _This should be obvious even to you, John_ face; he couldn’t quite see the eyebrows, but the line of his mouth matched what John remembered. 

“Well she’s not quite like all the others, is she, John?” replied Sherlock. “I heard the way you spoke of her. You’ve never used that tone of voice before when speaking of your romantic interests, nor employed such florid turns of phrase with such sincerity.”

John blinked at him. 

“You were in a near-comatose state, and yet you deduced all that.”

“If it were anyone else but me, I’d say that’s quite a ringing endorsement for the integrity of the relationship. But you have to remember, I am still one of the most perceptive men on the planet, if not _the_ most.” Sherlock’s mouth twisted into a wry smile.

John looked down and shook his head with a smile of his own.

“Amazing,” he said.

“See? Just like that,” said Sherlock. “That exact pitch and timbre –”

Sherlock’s mouth clamped shut, and John’s cheeks flushed, both of them realising at the same moment what Sherlock had pointed out. John walked back over to the side of his bed, but Sherlock had suddenly grown very interested in the pulse monitor clipped to his finger.

“Don’t tell me that surprises you,” said John softly. “After _this_ – all this time, after all we’ve been through.”

“No. It’s not new,” said Sherlock, very quietly, as if he was hoping to hide the words from John. “Not from you. What surprised me is that I – understand it, for the first time. All the facets and irrationalities, though it’s beyond coherent explanation. And it’s. Reciprocal.” 

John’s heart swelled, and he was afraid that tears would jump to his eyes again. He reached down, grabbed Sherlock’s free hand and squeezed it. Sherlock stared at their clasped fingers, seemingly awed. He squeezed back, experimentally, then looked up at John.

“I would like it very much if you could stay. Please,” said Sherlock.

John had only ever seen Sherlock look so like a lost child once before. It was almost too much for him to process: Sherlock, back from the dead _and_ letting his emotions slip through his carefully controlled facade. It was surreal, and if he thought too hard about it he felt he might faint a second time. He felt Sherlock’s hand flinch, as if he was trying to figure out if it was appropriate to keep holding on or to let go. 

“I will. I’ll stay,” said John. “But please, Sherlock. Don’t _ever_ do anything like this again. I don’t think my heart could take it.”

Sherlock relinquished John’s hand, and he walked toward the door once more. As he slipped out into the hallway, he heard Sherlock answer, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t think mine could either.”

 

\---

 

John stood immediately outside the door. His fingers felt numb as he scrolled through his contacts. There were so many people that had to be told that he was alive. Mrs Hudson needed to know. Greg too, and Molly. John harboured no delusion that Mycroft didn’t know already, damn him. But first things first.

“Hey, love,” John said. 

“John, darling. Is there something the matter?” Worry tilted into her words. Mary could always interpret his voice, no matter what. She’d become quite good at it. He smiled.

“Nothing bad, but – unexpected, for lack of an adequate word.”

“What’s happened? Tell me.” She sounded less nervous and more curious now. He palmed his forehead and exhaled. Where do you even start with a story like this? 

“It’s all a bit too strange to explain over the phone. Can you come to the hospital?” 

She said she’d be along as soon as she could and John told her he loved her, assured her one last time she shouldn’t worry, and hung up. He went back into the room, the door clicking candidly behind him. Sherlock hadn’t taken his eyes away from the door, and John saw him visibly relax when he came back in. John dragged a chair over to his bedside and settled himself in, took his stethoscope from around his neck and placed it on the table.

“You should sleep, you know,” John said. “The more you rest, the faster you’ll heal.”

Sherlock only twisted his mouth and looked away, out the window. From it, a sliver of evening sky could be seen above the adjacent building. He raised a finger to point toward it.

“That bright point of light there. Tell me what it is, John.”

“What? Where?”

“On the horizon. Look. It’s not a star.”

John craned to look out the window. He saw it, hanging low in the cerulean sky.

“You’re right, it’s a planet. Venus.”

“It was visible to you when you were in Afghanistan,” Sherlock said. It was a question masquerading as a statement; Sherlock’s specialty. John was very fond of that particular inflection; it was an admission of shortcoming, proof of his limits. It was the great Sherlock Holmes in the dark asking John to be his conductor of light.

“Yes, it was.”

“You called it a star in your story. The Christmas star you saw in Kandahar.”

“Yes, well.” John rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t think Sherlock was conscious when he’d told him those stories. “It’s often mistaken for one.”  

Sherlock laid his head back, and was silent for a long while. John listened to the sound of him breathing, the quiet, reassuring  _beep beep_ of the heart monitor.

“I thought it was a star. I have since I was a child.” Sherlock’s voice was slow and soft, as if he was on the cusp of sleep. “No one ever told me otherwise, because I never asked. Obviously it’s irrelevant information and it hardly matters anymore, but it’s made me wonder how many other things –  _essential things_ – I’ve never found out because I didn’t even know I was unaware. But even the things that I consider essential shift, and it’s like trying to cover distance on a conveyor belt.”

He sighed deeply, as if he’d been defeated.

“No one person can ever know everything, Sherlock. Not even you. That’s all right, though. It’s part of being human.” 

Sherlock lifted his head at John’s words. His eyes were wide, and the dim light caught inside them, made them seem to glow. John expected him to object, but instead his expression looked as if John had just given him the finest compliment he’d ever received.

John’s phone chirped.

_I’m here, love_.

John texted Mary Sherlock’s room number and got up to meet her by the door.

Sherlock took it as his cue to suddenly burst forth with words, his voice no longer languid and sleepy.

“John, I do not wish to be unnecessarily dramatic. But I must tell you my time away has made me realise that you make me better than I am. A better man, a better detective. I am glad our lives have intersected, and I – I wish to continue our partnership, even though you have delineated a different trajectory. I hope this is acceptable to you.”

John looked down at his phone.

This was going to be difficult, even more difficult than it was before. Things were much different now. But when it was good then, it was  _so good_. They worked together like they were meant to, made to; and what Sherlock had said was true for John as well – he felt like a better man, a smarter doctor, a braver soldier when Sherlock was by his side. 

It was still true. 

And it probably always would be, god help them both. John smiled, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

_ You idiot_ , thought John fondly.

“Yes, Sherlock, that is quite acceptable to me.”

Sherlock’s face settled into a fantastically pleased look, the kind of look usually saved for serial killers and proven hypotheses. He nodded succinctly.

“I do hope your Mary will not become nauseated at the state of my appearance. I’d hate for our introduction to parallel your first meeting with her.”

John clapped a hand over his face.

“You heard that part as well, yeah,” he sighed. “Jesus, Sherlock, you don’t even sleep when you’ve been drugged to, do you?”

Sherlock’s smugness merely deepened as he turned to look out the window again.

There was a knock on the door. John went out.

“Mary,” John said. He hugged her tightly, kissing the space where her shoulder met the curve of her neck. She pulled back, putting a hand to his face.

“John, what’s all this about?” Her smile was lopsided, and she looked bewildered at his fairly giddy state. He took a deep breath. 

His hand was steady. His leg did not pain him.

“Remember the stories I told you about when I lived at Baker Street?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Your grand London adventures.” 

John looked into her grey eyes; they sparked with curiosity.

“Well, there’s someone I’d like for you to meet.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is me, adding my (very first) drop to the bucket that is our fandom. Note well: this story has not been beta'd, I am not any kind of medical professional, and has been inexpertly Brit-picked to the best of my ability. Apologies on all fronts.


End file.
